The Philosophy of Computer Science • Hacker News Board

Re: The Philosophy of Computer Science

#31

Post by GuiA » Sat, Feb 24, 2018, 3:42 PM UTC

neokantian wrote: post #25

The really interesting philosophies emerge from the trenches and the battles in the field. For example, the most surprising meta-level insights on randomness come from Nassim Taleb's decade-long experience in trading securities. What he writes, is truly striking. The article in the link, however, make no reference to such real-world starting points. It fails to emerge from the very practical. It does not gradually ab…

I am completely unfamiliar with Taleb, this is a genuine question - does he have any work that is accepted as academic philosophy? Just hearing coworkers/friends/etc talk about him, I thought he just wrote books for a general audience.

Re: The Philosophy of Computer Science

#32

Post by aje403 » Sat, Feb 24, 2018, 4:55 PM UTC

themodelplumber wrote: post #9

zengid wrote: post #6

Honest question: is this useful?

Sure: It's designed, like any qualitative model, to yield leverage. Know the laws, understand the principles, and soon you can pull off something amazing. Maybe it guides you into a career path within the broad field of CS, or perhaps you use the principles as metaphor-templates for your personal CS education. "In what way could this Hello World program be described as a mathematical object? Is it an axiomatic theory…

This has zero practical usage unless you have a personal interest in the subject, in which case, go for it

Re: The Philosophy of Computer Science

#33

Post by nickpsecurity » Sat, Feb 24, 2018, 5:11 PM UTC

dvddgld wrote: post #26

Props to the Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy, it’s perhaps the best general resource on philosophy on the web

Great article and discussion on it here for anyone trying to build something similar:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10266103

Re: The Philosophy of Computer Science

#34

Post by nickpsecurity » Sat, Feb 24, 2018, 5:17 PM UTC

EugeneOZ wrote: post #16

sedachv wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely, because it keeps you from wasting time. Computer programming is applied analytic philosophy and unfortunately very few people realize this. For example, if more people knew about the shortcomings of Platonism, we wouldn't be wasting time on idiotic fads like OO patterns.

Should people work on OpenSource at all after reading Niccolò Machiavelli?

Or seeing it in practice as capitalist technologists practicing the alternative accumulated enough wealth to buy politicians who passed patent laws allowing FOSS developers/companies to be put out of business, regulators who may penalize new services on Internet, and API rulings in court to reduce interoperability with or escape to FOSS alternatives? I think the default should be commercialized variants of either flexible shared-source or open source whose players pull together in lobbying and media to advance FOSS interests like their opponents do to advance lock-in and anti-competitive practices. Otherwise, the game continues with one side playing aggressively using every strategy available, the other side mostly is on the bench, and probability favors one side dominating in that for a long time.

Re: The Philosophy of Computer Science

#35

Post by lainon » Sat, Feb 24, 2018, 5:39 PM UTC

dvddgld wrote: post #26

Props to the Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy, it’s perhaps the best general resource on philosophy on the web

Note that there's also the "Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy" which is, such as the SEP, written by professional Philosophers.

http://www.iep.utm.edu/

Re: The Philosophy of Computer Science

#36

Post by dvddgld » Sat, Feb 24, 2018, 5:47 PM UTC

lainon wrote: post #35

dvddgld wrote: post #26

Props to the Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy, it’s perhaps the best general resource on philosophy on the web

Note that there's also the "Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy" which is, such as the SEP, written by professional Philosophers. http://www.iep.utm.edu/

They definitely deserve a shout-out too, these two resources happily got me through a couple of undergrad philosophy electives!

Re: The Philosophy of Computer Science

#37

Post by dvddgld » Sat, Feb 24, 2018, 5:48 PM UTC

GuiA wrote: post #30

dvddgld wrote: post #26

Props to the Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy, it’s perhaps the best general resource on philosophy on the web

It’s a great example of what an editorialized online encyclopedia can be. Would love to learn about other such resources for other fields.

Me too! If anyone has any fantastic niche web encyclopaedia links, link away!

Re: The Philosophy of Computer Science

#38

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Feb 24, 2018, 5:57 PM UTC

neokantian wrote: post #25

The really interesting philosophies emerge from the trenches and the battles in the field. For example, the most surprising meta-level insights on randomness come from Nassim Taleb's decade-long experience in trading securities. What he writes, is truly striking. The article in the link, however, make no reference to such real-world starting points. It fails to emerge from the very practical. It does not gradually ab…

[deleted]

Re: The Philosophy of Computer Science

#39

Post by sedachv » Sat, Feb 24, 2018, 6:03 PM UTC

pasabagi wrote: post #15

sedachv wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely, because it keeps you from wasting time. Computer programming is applied analytic philosophy and unfortunately very few people realize this. For example, if more people knew about the shortcomings of Platonism, we wouldn't be wasting time on idiotic fads like OO patterns.

Can you expand on this? To me, Plato seems like a fairly good fit for the computer world. I also think that, from the perspective of analytic philosophy, OO patterns make some kind of sense - since they allow us to clarify problems as being subsets of more general ones.

> Can you expand on this? To me, Plato seems like a fairly good fit for the computer world.

That is exactly the issue - computing is the closest thing we will ever have to Platonic Idealism. You can create simple, elegant, symmetric worlds. Many people instead assume that whatever poorly designed programming language is around at the moment is the be-all, end-all Platonic world that they must inhabit, and then proceed to come up with all kinds of dumb workarounds because the programming language does not model whatever they are trying to express, all the while patting themselves on the back for being clever and creating "abstractions."

OO patterns do not make any kind of sense. There is no "generality" or "abstraction" about Singletons or Factories. They are made-up nonsense terms for ad-hoc techniques people hacked together to work around the problems they had trying to apply certain classes of OO languages to modeling certain kinds of problems in the real world.

So the contrast should be between different philosophic schools - if patterns (and OO inheritance) is like Platonism, what would materialism be? I think DSLs and DDD is a kind of materialist view on computer programming. And DDD's emphasis on clear and precise naming and concepts is very much what analytic philosophy is also concerned with.

Re: The Philosophy of Computer Science

#40

Post by pmoriarty » Sat, Feb 24, 2018, 6:06 PM UTC

dvddgld wrote: post #26

Props to the Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy, it’s perhaps the best general resource on philosophy on the web

The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy is definitely a step up from Wikipedia's coverage of philosophy, but it comes from a strong and pretty obvious Analytic point of view. For coverage from other points of view (which arguably give more accurate and informed accounts of non-analytic philosophy), you have to resort to classes or books.